Friday, July 4, 2014

Goosetongue

Wild Plants And Wooly Bears

Goosetongue

I’m
just now finishing up the last of the goosetongue, Plantago juncoides, that I picked almost two weeks ago. I got so
much of it that I home-canned 13 jars, gave a copious amount to a neighbor and
had enough left for daily eating for several weeks. Goosetongue keeps well in
the refrigerator for a long time. To use, just rinse in cold water to freshen
the leaves.

Hitting
goosetongue just right is key to easy cleaning. By that I mean harvesting the
leaves just before the seedstalks appear. After that, separating the leaves
from seedstalks becomes quite tedious.

But
today, on July 4th, I see that other plants are coming along nicely.
Weeding my garden now always means lots of meals of great, fresh green vegetables.
Lamb’s quarters, amaranth and quickweed, or Galinsoga, are all of a size to be
useful now. And they all taste more or less like spinach.

I
must add that I have a new “wild” plant that I started from seed last winter.
Hundreds of years ago, the English cultivated a wild member of the goosefoot
tribe called Good King Henry. The botanical name, Chenopodium bonus-henricus, says it all. It’s a Chenopodium, just
like lamb’s quarters. And it tastes something like it. This has been an
important experiment for me, since GKH is a perennial. And as such, it can be
relied upon to provide food year after year.

But
having never tasted the plant, it was a gamble devoting garden space to it. Now
I see that it was a good bet indeed. Next year I plan on adding another row of
GKH.

The
season progresses quickly and it’s hard to grasp that we are in midsummer now.
And with that, my time at Spruce Point Inn in BoothbayHarbor
begins anew. I’m there teaching wild plants every Tuesday from 1:30 p.m. to
3:00 p.m.

Although
these sessions are aimed at clients of the inn, the public is invited, at no
charge. So if you would like to partake of a casual, and hopefully informative
discussion and plant walk, feel free to show up at the inn by 1:30 every
Tuesday from now until the end of August.

1 comment:

About Tom Seymour

Besides writing freelance pieces for a number of magazines, I am also a regular columnist and feature writer for The Maine Sportsman Magazine, New England’s largest circulation outdoor magazine. Additionally, I am a regular contributor to Fisherman’s Voice Magazine, specializing in maritime history and human-interest stories. Finally, I write several columns for Courier Publication newspapers, including a home-and-garden column called From The Ground Up.

My book credits include Wild Plants of Maine, A Useful Guide, Hidden World Revealed, Musings of A Maine Naturalist and Tom Seymour's Forager's Notebook, all by Just Write Books, Topsham, Maine. I also wrote Foraging New England, Fishing Maine, Hiking Maine, Off The Beaten Path, Maine, Birding Maine and Nuts & Berries of New England, all for Globe Pequot Press. The Maine Sportsman has published a collection of my wildlife columns in book form as an inducement to subscribers. Finally, Tom Seymour's Maine, A Maine Anthology, iUniverse Press, is a collection of Maine history and folklore.

Foraging for wild plants is my great passion and these figure largely in my diet. I live in a small cottage that sits well off the road on 10 acres of land in Waldo, Maine.